Oath Of Supremacy Research Articles

Andrew Hadfield, Lying in Early Modern English Culture: From the Oath of Supremacy to the Oath of Allegiance.

Andrew Hadfield, Lying in Early Modern English Culture: From the Oath of Supremacy to the Oath of Allegiance.

Lying in Early Modern English Culture: From the Oath of Supremacy to the Oath of Allegiance. Andrew Hadfield. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017. Pp. xvi+368.

<i>Lying in Early Modern English Culture: From the Oath of Supremacy to the Oath of Allegiance</i>. Andrew Hadfield. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017. Pp. xvi+368.

Lying in Early Modern English Culture: From the Oath of Supremacy to the Oath of Allegiance. Andrew Hadfield. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017. xvi + 368 pp. $80.

Lying in Early Modern English Culture: From the Oath of Supremacy to the Oath of Allegiance. Andrew Hadfield. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017. xvi + 368 pp. $80.

The “imagined community” of the church as a means of resistance and comfort in the Dialogue of Comfort against Tribulation

Faced by pressure to take the Oath of Supremacy, More grounded his resistance to Henry VIII in his argument that he had the consensus of the “whole corps of Christendom” on his side. In this article, I argue that More accessed that consensus through acts of the imagination. In the Dialogue of Comfort against Tribulation, More imaginatively evokes the community of the church through his creation of a fictional frame that encompasses multiple generations, nations, and languages and demonstrates his ample vision of the church. Through his use of Psalm 91 as an organizing device for the Dialogue, More identifies the shared experience of suffering as an identifying feature of the church. Connecting himself to this community through acts of the imagination, I argue, helped More to resist Henry VIII, find comfort in his imprisonment, and prepare himself for death.

ANDREW HADFIELD. Lying in Early Modern English Culture. From the Oath of Supremacy to the Oath of Allegiance

ANDREW HADFIELD. Lying in Early Modern English Culture. From the Oath of Supremacy to the Oath of Allegiance

Terrys in Spain and Latin-America: Exile and Rise of an Irish Merchant Family

Introduction In recent years the role played by foreign families in the modern and contemporary history of Spain has been increasingly recognized by historians (Oscar Recio 2012). The most numerous groups were French, Genoese, Flemish and Irish who settled in colonial Cadiz during the 17th and 18th centuries. According to Bustos (2005: 141), the Irish community represented 18 percent of foreigners in Cadiz by 1750 and were the third most important colony after the Genoese and French. This work traces the history of a noble Irish family from Cork, the Terrys, since 1600. Following a long family tradition marked by a strong influence in commercial, civil and ecclesiastic affairs in their home country, the Terrys lost power and most of their possessions during The Cromwellian wars. This prompted a number of them to go into exile to Spain during the first half of the 18th century, where they achieved remarkably rapid social and economic ascent. Particular attention is given to the origin and accomplishments of some prominent Terrys in military, diplomatic, and commercial affairs in 18th and 19th century Spain. Our study of the genealogy of these Terrys in Cadiz and Malaga illuminates their origins and family relationships. Three family branches can be distinguished: two of which arrive in Cadiz directly from Ireland, whereas a third branch came from Genoa. Historical Context of the Early 17th Century: The Constitutional Struggle (1603-1641) In 1600, there were three distinct groups in Ireland, Gaelic Irish, Old English and New English. (1) The vast majority of Gaelic Irish were rurally based. Towns were not characteristic of Gaelic lordships, except for Episcopal centres and the unusual exception of the O'Reilly's settlement at Cavan (Foster 1988: 16). The towns existing in 1600 were often imposed on older foundations or sited at a port or estuary. Franchises and liberties were extensive by English standards. The freemen of these towns tended to be aristocratic merchants rather than craftsmen: Old English burgher families or local gentry who had migrated inside the walls. On Queen Elizabeth's death, James VI of Scotland became King James I of England. James was a son of the Catholic Mary Stuart. In expectation that he would show himself well disposed towards his mother's faith, the Irish recusants, i.e. those who refused the Oath of Supremacy of the King (or Queen) as Head of the Church, looked forward hopefully to his reign. It was among the Old English, and not among the natives, that this expectation was highest (Beckett 1966: 46).This was the case in Cork City, where the delay in proclaiming the new King was intended to impress upon the new monarch the seriousness of the opposition of Catholics to the law compelling them to attend Protestant worship. One of the ringleaders to the opposition was Edmund Terry (2) (Hackett 2001: 116). Traditionally, the Old English had held themselves aloof from the conspiracies and rebellions of the Gaelic Irish. But during the first four decades of the 17th century their loyalty was placed under increasing strain. They were excluded, in theory, from local as well as central government; heavy fines were imposed on prominent citizens refusing to attend Protestant services and even their titles to land like those of the Gaelic Irish, began to be questioned in courts that inevitably found for the crown. For periods, the English establishment took a pragmatic view, and the evidence shows that Catholics still held positions in civil authorities (Dickson 2005: 3-28). The Old English combined loyalty to England with a Catholicism that, since the Reformation, no longer attracted English support. They also controlled one-third of Irish land at a time when political acceptability was becoming dependant on religious conformity (Clarke 2000: 15). The map of Cork city in 1600 (O'Brien 1974) shows the city to be walled and bounded on all sides by channels of the River Lee (Figure 1). …

Between the Sacraments and Treason: Aspects of the Politicgal Thought of the English Recusants in the First Decade of Elizabeth I's Reign

AbstractThis essay treats how English Roman Catholics, deprived of place and standing in their native church, addressed the two essential elements underlying the Protestant political economy of the Elizabethan Settlement. After a brief précis of how other studies have looked at political thought, the Protestant axioms of a lay supremacy and a unilateral national prerogative in the government of the church shall be delineated. The two main sections shall then treat the Catholic critique of the English national church and its lay supremacy respectively. The conclusion shall address the dilemma of conscience that these principles inflicted on Roman Catholics in Elizabethan England. Having been both summarily deprived of ecclesiastical standing and alienated from their native polity by their refusal to acknowledge the demands of the Elizabethan Settlement, England's Catholics found themselves justifying their actions and assailing the new ecclesio-political arrangements. Specifically the Recusants took aim at the notion of the laity exercising authority over the church whether from the throne or in parliament, and at the concept that England apart from the rest of the Church at all times and in all places could order its rites, liturgies, sacraments, and creed. This second item became more pronounced in that the Oath of Supremacy specifically mentioned the renunciation of all bishops unless they were English. For the Recusants these two elements created an insurmountable barrier for any sincere Catholic conscience.

The life of Andrew Boorde, c1490-1549.

Physician, traveller, writer and spy, Andrew Boorde was born c1490 and became a Carthusian monk after abandoning his medical studies at Oxford. Temperamentally unsuited to the life of a religious, after 20 years at the London Charterhouse he obtained a dispensation to travel to Europe to continue his medical studies. Returning to England he began to practise medicine, treating members of the nobility and, through a meeting with Thomas Cromwell which was to influence the rest of his life, he attended the King, Henry VIII. In 1534, after a second, more extensive, tour of Europe in which he visited many medical schools and universities seeking yet more medical knowledge, he returned to the London Charterhouse which was undergoing a brutal dissolution at the hands of Thomas Cromwell. Boorde reluctantly signed the Oath of Supremacy, an act which was to haunt him for the rest of his life. He was then used by Cromwell to travel abroad again but this time as a spy to gather intelligence for the King while continuing to study medicine. Boorde finally took his MD at the University of Montpellier and was incorporated in the same degree a year later at Oxford. He then gave expression to all he had learnt by writing his legacy, four books which were published in 1547. 'A Compendyous Regyment or a Dyetary of Health' was one of the earliest treatises on the cultivation of health composed in England and stressed the importance of sanitation together with a detailed examination of diet. The 'Brevyary of Health' listed diseases alphabetically together with remedies and treatment, blending sound medical advice with religion and superstition: its companion volume was 'The Principles of Astronomy'. But Boorde's 'Fyrst Boke of the Introduction of Knowledge' was his tour-de-force; it was a comprehensive encyclopaedia of all the European countries he had visited, illustrated by woodcuts. By 1547 Boorde was settled in England, probably Master of the Hospital of St Giles-in-the-Fields in London but by 1549 he was living the life of a recluse in Winchester. Tortured by guilt at his perceived lack of religious integrity and persecuted by his enemies he died in the Fleet prison amid rumors that he had poisoned himself.

PAPIST AS HERETIC: THE BURNING OF JOHN FOREST, 1538

This article examines the circumstances surrounding the condemnation and burning for heresy of the Observant Franciscan John Forest in 1538. Forest's principal ‘heresy’ was his adherence to the papacy, making him the only Englishman to be burnt for this offence by any Tudor regime. His fate, however, can be placed in the context of an increasing willingness of Henrician apologists in the 1530s to identify papal claims as heretical, particularly over the issue of the authority of a general council, to which Henry VIII had appealed over the divorce. The papal convocation of the council of Mantua in 1536–7, and Henry's need to impugn its authority, provides the immediate context for Forest's condemnation. The article also demonstrates how the harshness of Forest's treatment was related to his avowed equivocation over the oath of supremacy, and how Forest and a number of other conservative priests and laypeople were able to employ strategies to subvert the government's attempts to bind their consciences. It concludes by suggesting a number of reasons, political and theological, why the policy pursued with Forest was not repeated.

Two Seventeenth Century Hebrew Scholars: Thomas Fairfax and Edward Slaughter

Prevented by their refusal to take the Oath of Supremacy from being admitted to a degree at Oxford or Cambridge, Catholics—clerical or lay—who wished for higher education not infrequently attended foreign universities or colleges but there were those who achieved distinction in one branch or another of study without attending any institution of higher learning. One example of this was the subject of a recent article in Recusant History —the Jesuit astronomer Christopher Maire.

II. The Short Parliament (1640) Diary of Sir Thomas Aston

p. 1 The proceedings of the house of parlament the 13th April 1640. The first Ceremony is the riding to the Abbey. The King &amp; Lords in state [in the House of Lords]. Then the Kings speech recommends a Speaker. Then the house of Commons &amp; offer the Speaker [Sir John Glanville] the chayre whoe makes many delays &amp; excuses &amp; at last takes it. Then the house is adiourned till the 15:th of April. The oaths of Supremacy &amp; alleageance adminnistered by the Earle Marshall to as many as were present. Then a Commission to Some of them to sweere the rest, which all men must take ere they sitt in the house.

Tunstal—Trimmer or Martyr?

Was Cuthbert Tunstal a ‘trimmer’—that is, one primarily concerned with his own advantage—rather than a partisan in the religious revolution initiated by Henry VIII? We might have expected the latter contingency after reading the glowing tribute paid to him by Sir Thomas More: ‘… the incomparable Cuthbert Tunstal, who, to everyone's satisfaction, has recently been appointed Master of the Rolls. I will not try to praise him, not simply because the world would discount such praise from a close friend, but because his fine qualities and learning defy description. His fame is so widespread, that praising him would be, as they say, like lighting up the sun with a candle’. Yet the historiographical neglect of Tunstal seems to indicate that historians have preferred the pejorative judgement of Foxe, who says that he ‘dissembled’ in taking the Oath of Supremacy to Henry VIII. All the conservative bishops who took the oath ‘turned cat-in-the-pan’ in Mary's reign, but when they took it in 1535 they were, according to Foxe, ‘right Lutherans’. He, unquestionably, thought Tunstal was a ‘trimmer’.

The English Indemnity Acts 1726–1867

Modern scholars generally agree that the Indemnity Acts of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries were enacted to afford legal relief to religious nonconformists from the restrictions placed upon them by the Test Act of 1673 and the Corporation Act of 1661. The oaths required by this legislation were a means of debarring religiously and politically seditious individuals from offices, in national government in the case of the Test Act and from corporation government in that of the Corporation Act. Both acts required the taking of “the several oaths of supremacy and allegiance” in addition to the “sacrament of the Lord's Supper according to the usage of the Church of England.” To qualify under the Test Act the sacrament had to be taken in a public church on a Sunday “immediately after divine service and sermon…” within three months of admission to office. The Corporation Act differed significantly in its requirement that the sacrament had to have been received in the year preceding election to corporate office.

Joseph Berington‐‘Prophet of Ecumenism’?

The Reverend Joseph Berington (1743-1827) has never had a particularly good press even from sympathetic Catholic historians. This is almost certainly due to the fact that he was a leading supporter of the cisalpine, if not gallican, Catholic Committee and was one of those Catholics who belived that an Oath of Supremacy, properly understood, was not incompatible with Catholic principles. As a result of his attitude and activities, he was at one stage censured by the bishops and deprived of his faculties. Berington himself felt that English Catholics had suspected him since he taught philosophy at Douay where he was regarded as being too modern and bold in his philosophical opinions, and that this explained the later questioning of his orthodoxy. Joseph Gillow simply claims that Berington’s ‘love of novelty and of the affected liberality of the day created great prejudice against his writings, which, however, was considerably removed before his death’.Yet according to a ‘Memoir’ published in the Catholic Miscellany, Berington made ‘the first open and bold attack ... on the immense mass of Protestant prejudice that had been accumulating against Catholics for more than two centuries’, while the Reflections addressed to the Rev. John Hawkins was described as his ‘principal work on religious controversy’. The story of this particular publication began in America during 1784 when Charles Wharton, one of the first American Jesuits, published his Letter to the Roman Catholics of the City of Worcester. This personal apologia for leaving the Church was addressed to the English Catholics whom he had served as chaplain.

Bishop Bonner and the Oath

Section 9 of the Act of Supremacy, 1559, provided that ‘all and every Archebishoppe Bishoppe and all and every other Ecclesiasticall Person, and other Ecclesiastical Officer and Minister… and all and every Temporall Judge Justicer Mayor and other Laye or Temporall Officer and Minister’, and certain other persons should take an oath the form of which was set out in the section. The oath acknowledged the queen's ecclesiastical authority and renounced all foreign jurisdiction including that of the pope. Section 10 of the Act provided that if any person who was required to take the oath refused to do so, he should be deprived of ‘all and every Ecclesiasticall and Spiritual Promotion Benefice and Office, and every Temporall and Laye Promotion and Office’ which he had at the time of refusal, and should thereafter be disqualified for life from holding or exercising any such office or promotion.The Act of Supremacy received the royal assent on 8 May 1559, soon after Easter, and immediately the surviving bishops of Mary's reign were faced with the prospect of taking the oath prescribed by the act. On 23 May 1559, a commission was issued to eighteen laymen authorizing and requiring them to administer the oath of supremacy to the bishops and others required by the act to take it.

The Exclusion of Catholics from the Lord Chancellorship, 1673–1954

The composition and policies of Charles Il’s Cabal ministry in the years 1667-73 provoked a vigorous reaction from the Pension Parliament. It forced the king to cancel his Declaration of Indulgence in March 1672 as being both unconstitutional and dangerous to the Church, for it implied a prerogative power to suspend Acts of Parliament and it facilitated the already alarming growth of Popery under the patronage of Louis XIV. In the following year, in order to make another Cabal impossible, Parliament passed an “Act for preventing dangers which may happen from Popish recusants”, commonly called the Test Act. By it, all Catholics holding office under the Crown were deprived by the simple device of demanding that they should take the oaths of Supremacy and Allegiance of Elizabeth and James I respectively; receive the Sacrament according to the usage of the Church of England, and make this Declaration : “I, A.B., do declare that I do believe that there is not any transubstantiation in the sacrament of the Lord,s Supper, or in the elements of bread and wine at or after the consecration thereof by any person whatsoever”.

The Death of Thomas More, Secular Priest, Great-Grandson of St. Thomas More

After the death of the Archpriest George Birkhead the secular priest John Colleton and his fellow assistants wrote to the Pope on 28 July 1614, to submit a list of suitable condidates from whom a bishop for England might be chosen. The names put forward included those of William Bishop and Richard Smith, who were each later to receive the appointment, and William Harrison, who in fact was made Archpriest in 1615. The list of suggestions ended thus: “Lastly we should like to add ... the name of Mr. Thomas More, our Agent, a most acceptable man, both because of his own merits and because of the most glorious memory of his great-grandfather, the famous More, who with the Cardinal elect of Rochester, first suffered an illustrious martyrdom for refusing the oath of supremacy: were it not that he is the only man we have or can hope to have who can afford from his own resources to act for us out there.” It was a name to be proud of and a relationship he did not hesitate to proclaim. When, with his brother Henry, he arrived at the English College in Rheims in 1583, aged 18 years, they were registered as “Thomas and Henry More, brothers, great grand-children of the most holy martyr Thomas More.” He went on to Rome in 1587, but the registers of the English College there and those of Valladolid, where he arrived in 1591, contain no reference to his ancestry. After some sixteen years of activity on the English Mission he accompanied Richard Smith out to Rome in 1609 intending to put the case for the appointment of a bishop to rule once more the church in England in place of an archpriest. He swore he would not return until they had succeeded, and he kept his oath. He spent the next seven years in Rome as Clergy Agent, and a further five years in Spain, trying to get help for the seminaries and eventually helping to establish the new seminary in Lisbon. When in 1623 William Bishop was appointed bishop for England, Thomas More was made by him Archdeacon of Hertfordshire and Northamptonshire, and he may have then returned home to England, but in May 1624, after the death of William Bishop he was made special agent to go to Rome for the purpose of securing the appointment of another bishop, and was back in Rome in August. He died there in the following year. The story of his last illness and death is considered worth telling now for the first time because it is so extraordinarily well documented by manuscripts in the Westminster Archives, the Archbishop of Birmingham's Archives and the Archives of the Old Brotherhood.

Joseph Berington—‘Prophet of Ecumenism’?

The Reverend Joseph Berington (1743-1827) has never had a particularly good press even from sympathetic Catholic historians. This is almost certainly due to the fact that he was a leading supporter of the cisalpine, if not gallican, Catholic Committee and was one of those Catholics who belived that an Oath of Supremacy, properly understood, was not incompatible with Catholic principles. As a result of his attitude and activities, he was at one stage censured by the bishops and deprived of his faculties. Berington himself felt that English Catholics had suspected him since he taught philosophy at Douay where he was regarded as being too modern and bold in his philosophical opinions, and that this explained the later questioning of his orthodoxy. Joseph Gillow simply claims that Berington’s ‘love of novelty and of the affected liberality of the day created great prejudice against his writings, which, however, was considerably removed before his death’.